Busch hangs on for truck victory

HAMPTON, Ga. " Another track, another victory for Kyle Busch.

The 23-year-old star won his second straight NASCAR truck race Saturday, holding off Kevin Harvick on the final lap at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Even though he struggled on restarts after losing both second and third gear in his Toyota, Busch surged past Todd Bodine on the back straightaway with five laps to go and held on the rest of the way to win the American Commercial Lines 200.

Harvick also went by Bodine and set out after Busch, whose truck wobbled on the final two laps coming through turn four but beat Harvick's Chevrolet to the line by about a length.

Busch, a Sprint Cup star who started from the pole, has dominated the Camping World Truck Series in the early going.

He finished second in the season opener at Daytona and won the last two races, adding to his victory at California two weeks ago.

He's been especially dominant in Atlanta, winning four of his five truck starts on the 1.54-mile track.

"The truck was not great, but good," Busch said. "All I did was bide my time and do what I needed to do at the end of the race."

Busch has won at every NASCAR venue through the first month of the season. He captured one of the qualifying races at Daytona, took first in both the Nationwide and truck series races at California, and picked up his first Sprint Cup win of the season at Las Vegas last weekend.

Now, he's won at Atlanta, too " with the Cup race still to come on Sunday.

"That's pretty cool," Busch said. "Definitely the best time of your life is to win a race, so this is pretty awesome. It's just having good equipment, the guys being smart enough to work on it and me being smart enough to know when to race and when not to race. It's awesome to win at every venue so far. I can dream of winning at every single one of them to make it 36, but I don't see that happening. It's awfully tough to win in this sport."

Cup regular Harvick was competing in the truck series for the first time this year and appeared to have the strongest machine. Poor pit stops ruined his hopes of winning.

"Our stops were atrocious," Harvick said. "The thing was fast, but it doesn't matter if you can't do a pit stop."

Busch's victory provided a bit of good news for truck owner Billy Ballew, who was arrested for drunken driving on the speedway grounds Wednesday night.

The team shook off Ballew's problems with another strong performance.

"It certainly didn't look like it ruined any preparations," Busch said. "That was just something that happened earlier in the week. It has nothing to do with the race team. It has nothing to do with anyone on this team. It's a personal issue with Billy."

Bodine held on for third in a Toyota, making it 1-2-3 in his first three truck races of the year. He beat Busch at Daytona and finished second to him at California.

But, in a sign of the tough economic times, Bodine isn't sure if he'll even compete in the next truck race at Martinsville. He ran the first two events without a major sponsor, and raced in Atlanta through a one-off deal with restaurant chain Tilted Kilt.

"As of right now, we're not going to Martinsville," Bodine said. "We don't have a sponsor, and if we don't have a sponsor we're not going. Hopefully we'll have some discussions with Tilted Kilt this week."

Bodine attempted to qualify for Atlanta's Cup race, too, but was one of four drivers failing to make the 43-car field.